Cubs Notes

It seems the site was down for a bit, apologies.

I'm about to take off with the family to the game. Go Ninja Go!

Dejesus, Castro, Rizzo, Soriano, LaHair, Clevenger, Barney, Valbuena, Samardzija vs. Billingsley tonight.

Have a great weekend!

The Savior knocked out 3 hits including his 9th home run last year and is up to 190 hits. That's 10 hits shy of the magic 200 mark for the math impaired. He has 15 games to do it, which I don't believe will be a problem unless Q-Ball decides he needs another life lesson on the bench. By my back of the envelope calculations, if he stays healthy, he's on pace to reach 3,000 hits by age 36, sometime during the 2026 season.

No pressure.

- Baseball America took to some list making and recently rated the Cubs 2005 draft as the worst of the lot. A look at the 2006 draft, the first under Tim Wilken sees them moving up 5 spots.

$11.5 million investment in Tyler Colvin (1), Jeff Samardzija (5) has yet to pay off.

That year the Cubs lost their 2nd, 3rd and 4th round picks by signing Bob Howry (Type A), Scott Eyre (Type A) and Jacque Jones (Type B). Their 1st round pick was protected since it was in the top half of the draft. Other notable (notorious?) picks from that draft were Steve Clevenger, Jacob Renshaw (traded to Orioles for Trachsel), Chris Huseby ($1.3M bonus, released by Boston in August), Marcus Hatley, Matt Camp and Blake Parker.

Some bits of news from the latest news cycle, most of it mentioned in the comments in the thread below.

- I admit missing out on this rather crucial piece of information, but apparently Aramis Ramirez 2012 option is a mutual option. Technically, if the Cubs exercise the $16M option, he can void it and forfeit the $2M buyout, and his agent suggests that with Hendry gone, that's looking more likely now.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad news yet. $16M for one season is a bit expensive for Ramirez, but there's not a lot out there to play the hot corner either.

- Tracy Ringolsby goes after Cubs team president Crane Kenney today over on Fox Sports.